Posts tagged with Hulu

The Wall Street Journal may be getting more expensive. The business paper has been making headlines of late for growing its revenues behind a pay wall while other papers are bleeding ad revenue. But is the Journal the exception to the rule, or just ahead of the curve of paying more money for content?

Speaking at the Digiday: Networks conference in New York, Brian Quinn, the Journal's vice president of digital ad sales, said that the newspaper is so happy with its subcription results that it is looking to push the website toward a "hyperpaid" model. And Quinn said that there are initiatives across Newscorp trying to try to get people to pay even more for its content.

Just last week, former AOL exec and current Chief Digital Officer at News Corp. John Miller suggested that Hulu content might soon go behind a pay wall. But will charging for content work for all Dow Jones properties?

Hulu has fast become one of the internet's top destinations for professional video content. With free high-def programming from the likes of NBC, FOX, Comedy Central and many others, it's not hard to see why.

Pepsi may not be rolling out its new retro logo in Europe for another year, but the soft drink giant is making use of its old school theme somewhere - in new media. Pepsi's new logo, which borrows from an older aesthetic (and has noted similarities to the Obama campaign logo), is now latching on to the popularity of nostalgia shows online and pairing its new "Pepsi Throwback" with 70s and 80s shows on Hulu.

Three 15-second ads will promote Pepsi's new product made
from real sugar, an ingredient that was dropped in favor of by corn syrup in
American soda products 40 years. And the spots will match the enthusiasm for nostalgic shows like Hill Street Blues and The
Mary Tyler Moore Show, replete with Pet Rocks, shag carpeting, and fondue pots.

Hulu's meteoric rise as the online video site of choice for big media companies looking for online distribution has attracted another equity partner: Disney.

The Walt Disney Company has announced a deal that sees Disney taking a 27% stake in Hulu and receiving 3 seats on Hulu's board. Hulu is now owned by Disney, News Corp., NBC Universal and a private equity firm.

If 2008 was the year when everything was coming up ad networks, 2009 may well be the year of branded video entertainment.

Interactive channels are rapidly closing the purchase influence gap between TV and Web-based forms of advertising and marketing, while meanwhile the small screen is assuming more or less equal precendence with the boob tube. (Just consider the number of people who wached the inauguration of Barack Obama online this week.)

comScore reported yesterday that Americans watched 34% more online
videos this past November than they did a year ago in November 2007. This amounts
to a whopping 12.7bn videos watched in a single month.

Google properties, which include YouTube, remained the top online video
destinations, drawing nearly 98m unique viewers and accounting
for just over 40% of videos watched.